Flashback 11/4/08

Two weeks out from a mid term elections. Democrats run the gambit from depressed to frustrated. In NY people are excited about John Stewart's March to Restore Sanity, the Rent is Too Damn High Party (full disclosure: I voted for their mayoral candidate in 2005), and, well, that's about it. Republicans are already planning to pitch their Tea Party tents in the halls of Congress, while a few conservative reformers look off from the sidelines, wringing their hands as they worry about the fate of the country. We need a flashback.

Tonight Jeff Deutchman's participatory documentary 11/4/08 will screen simultaneously in cities around the country. The film, a collection of footage shot on the day Barack Obama was elected president, takes you back to a moment in time where people placed a lot of hope and a lot of expectations on a single man. How you remember that time might very well be colored by your current political mood, but, maybe, just maybe, we have to let go and go back to a day when the country felt like dawn was breaking. Feelings like that don't come easy.